All Ziva's fault
by dreamingofsunshine
Summary: The knock on effects of Ziva coming to NCIS


_AN: I wrote this a while ago, and decided to type it up and post it today, I apologise for any mistakes made. _

Kate died of a bullet wound to the head.

Ari did it.

Did Ziva help?

Ducky aged ten years.

Everyone grew quieter.

Six.

Ziva came, and replaced Kate in their mind and in their heart, and for that no-one ever truly forgave her.

She died alone in a concrete bunker. She had played assassin for too long. When she gave up, gave in, became part of the team, she killed herself.

Salim Ulman pulled the trigger, but her heart dictated it.

Five.

Ducky became an old man, he lost his jokes and his charm, he did his work and looked out for his team. But they left and he was alone.

Gibbs retired, for real this time. He too was older, a danger rather than an asset. He did not leave this time, though. He stayed and looked after the shattered remains of his team, his family.

Tony lost himself. In his heart he found Ziva, wandered with her through every dream he had ever had. He stayed on the job, became team leader, but he was not really there. Every night Gibbs visited and poured another half empty bottle of bourbon or vodka down the sink. He tidied up Tony, watched him with deadened eyes.

McGee moved back to his job in the cybercrimes unit and mourned the job and the team he had lost. He threw himself into his work, lost himself in lines of green script, tried to forget the world.

Abby moved in with him. They got married, comforted each other. She stopped drinking CaffPow as Gibbs stopped bringing them.

Tony was shot through the heart on the job a year later. Everyone remarked on how peaceful he looked. His father came only to walk away immediately. Nobody cared. Gibbs stood and watched. Those who knew him masked surprise that his liver had lasted that long.

Four.

The autopsy nearly killed Ducky. He did it alone and never spoke of it, just like all of the others.

Gibbs drank himself to oblivion. He had lost his wife and daughter, and now his son. He let guilt consume him that he had not allowed them to be together. He had known though, as they had not, that they were like two orbiting stars; they might circle around each other, slowly grow closer. But they had to move away before they got too close, destroyed everything. They had grown too close, mentally if not physically. They had destroyed each other as well as everybody surrounding them. Maybe in another life it would have worked, but not this one.

Even through his drunken torpor Gibbs went, every Sunday, to the three graves under the bare tree in the cemetery by his house. Mossad had not wanted Ziva, so he had had her buried next to Kate. They had never met, but they should have. Gibbs had not allowed Tony's father his body, so he was buried next to Ziva. Gibbs liked to imagine that they were holding hands, under all that earth.

Three months later Gibbs' liver gave up. He died making a boat. Inscribed over the cabin door was one word. _Lost_.

Three.

Abby found him and it broke her. Only now did her coffin go away. Her black tears fell and she did not replace them. She grew up. Her hair was blonde once she grew the dye out. She was a broken Marilyn Monroe.

She and McGee had children; Ziva, Kate and Tony Leroy. Every day those names pierced them through, a reminder of what they had lost. Every day they wished them different. It felt like they were a replacement. They were so different though. Their children left home as soon as they could.

Ducky died by the autopsy table, a withered old man.

Two.

McGee died years later, aged 63. He died at his computer desk having worked too long, too hard, trying to forget. When they found the body his screensaver was up for the first time. It was pictures. A long stream of pictures of every one of them. Happy, healthy, whole. At the end of the hundreds he had collected was one of his children. The apology he never got to say.

One.

Abby did not let him have an autopsy, Ducky was gone and could not be replaced. She had leant not to even try, When McGee died Abby brought out her make-up and hair-dye. She tied back her hair again to reveal the spider-web. The last memento of what she had been and lost.

She cried black tears for all of them, for the last time. She brought out her coffin and slept in it amidst the cobwebs of time and memories.

She killed herself without leaving a trace.

Zero.

Maybe they met again in some afterlife, maybe they did not.

Ziva killed all of them. Unknowingly. Unchangeably. Incontrovertibly. Abby was right not to trust her, for she was once a killer so was always a killer.


End file.
